Labor MKs Face Harassment Probe After Flirting With Electoral Threshold

“Any close contact Labor had with the threshold this past April occurred against my wishes.”

Jerusalem, June 20 – Several lawmakers for one of Israel’s most venerable parties face an inquiry into allegedly lewd behavior as the party may have made inappropriate contact with having no representation in parliament at all.

A new probe alleges that MKs Amir Peretz, Stav Shafir, and Itzik Shmuli made uninvited advances toward the electoral threshold, the percentage of votes cast that marks the minimum for securing seats in the Knesset. In the April elections the threshold stood at 3.25%, and Labor garnered 4.43% – its worst showing in party history and down from 18.7% in the 2015 contest when the party ran in an alliance with the HaTnua Party. HaTnua did not run in the April elections. 4.43% marks the closest Labor has gotten to the threshold, raising concerns that some in the party have difficulty squaring their declared distaste for sexual innuendo in political rhetoric with their actual behavior toward the threshold.

Investigators cautioned that the probe remains in its initial stages and will not produce recommendations for weeks, perhaps months, by which time its findings may disrupt another election in September. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu failed to assemble a governing coalition by the deadline late last month, triggering another contest. Observers and political figures fear the confluence of the probe and further elections, both because of the deleterious effect it may have on Labor voters and because it will bring the MKs in question into close contact again with the electoral threshold, a troublesome prospect.

The MKs implicated in the scandal have maintained innocence. “I have always tried to stay as far as possible from the electoral threshold,” insisted Peretz. “We have had little to do with each other in the decades I have been in public service. Any close contact Labor had with the threshold this past April occurred against my wishes.”

Shafir accused political rivals of trying to distract from the real issues. “I’ve been fighting against this phenomenon since the moment I stepped into the Knesset,” she declared. “The idea that I, who have been the target of such flirting since day one, would then turn around and inflict it on the electoral threshold is absurd. I rather suspect some of our political opponents are afraid of an invigorated Labor.”

Party insiders voiced frustration that no one accuses the Arab parties of such behavior despite years of their flirting with the threshold, and wondered aloud whether that indicates soft bigotry of low expectations.

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